If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You have to register before you can post.

If you have recently signed up, please make sure you log in so that your activity is registered. This is required for automatic promotions to work and to ensure your account is not deleted during the registration process.

I agree with Super Vegeta. Having some "language candy" comes useful when you are in a hurry to get something done with the least effort. But when you return working back to that code after several months believe me you would rather have code with bigger readability.
For that specific matter in the past I actually ended up refactoring parts of my code from being as short as possible to being more readable.

Having easy readable code means you can jump in and start expanding it at any time without spending time to relearning of how that code works.

Easy readable code would also give you better starting position to start working with someone else in a team since they will understand your code more easily.

Also not being able to understand some less readable code also doesn't mean that you are stupid. it only means that you have still something to learn.

The only time that you should call yourself stupid is when stop learning because you think you can't learn either because you know everything or because learning seems to hard to you. So keep learning.
I myself am an educated market salesman and komercialist but I still leaned about programming on my own to the point that I would probably be able to teach others a thing or two.

Yes wasn't too serious, forgot to add smileys , but I do have horrible memory. One significant aspect is that I do not code full time, it's a side aspect of my job, and often done in time-fragmented chunks.

I think they are great (especially for string concatenation), especially since with later delphi and fpc you can inline them, and not suffer any (correct me) performance penalty for calling a function (stack allocations, etc..)